


The Case of the Missing Detective

by alexcat



Category: Elementary (TV)
Genre: Case Fic, Community: holmestice, Gen
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-05-31
Updated: 2018-05-31
Packaged: 2019-05-16 07:15:08
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,022
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/14806788
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/alexcat/pseuds/alexcat
Summary: Sherlock is missing and Joan must find him before it’s too late.





	The Case of the Missing Detective

**Author's Note:**

  * For [NairobiWonders](https://archiveofourown.org/users/NairobiWonders/gifts).



> This takes place in the current season of Elementary (6) and may contain spoilers and a lot of supposition as the season is young so far. 
> 
> I decided that case fiction was the way to go with these two and I leave it to the reader to decide if they are an item or not.

Joan hadn’t heard Sherlock come in last night. That didn’t always mean he wasn’t there. He was stealthy and even sneaky when he wanted to be. And he counted on her worrying and checking up on him. It was their own little dance. 

One that he enjoyed more than she did. 

Or perhaps he didn’t think of her at all. That was much more likely. 

Since his diagnosis, though, she worried more. He didn’t seem to be unstable but that didn’t mean he wasn’t. Just because he knew when he was hallucinating now didn’t mean that he always would be able to tell. 

She got up and made her way to the kitchen. The floors were cold on winter mornings in this old building. Why hadn’t she put on her slippers? 

There was a note on the coffee pot. “Marcus knows.” 

Damn him! Why couldn’t he just call her and tell her what was going on? Why all this subterfuge? Well, he _was_ Sherlock, wasn’t he? 

She called Marcus. “Marcus, I know it’s early, but Sherlock left a note on the coffeepot that says ‘Marcus knows’. Do you know what that means?”

“He left sent me a text that says ‘Gone to meeting’.” Marcus must have already been at work, because she could hear the sounds of the stationhouse in the background. 

“Okay. Well, that might be helpful. He does still go to meetings so maybe that’s where he is. He didn’t come home last night, though, and since the PCS diagnosis, I worry.” 

“Did you try to call him?” Marcus asked. 

“I just came downstairs. I was going to make coffee and saw the note, so not yet. I will. Thanks, Marcus.”

“Let me know when you find him.” 

“I will.” 

She called Sherlock’s cell. Straight to voicemail. He had it turned off then? That was odd. 

“It’s me. Call me. Yes, we both got the messages.”

She ate a bowl of strawberries and drank her coffee before she showered and dressed. She texted Sherlock the same message she’d sent to voicemail, then left the house. She went to the places where she knew Sherlock had been to meetings. On the bulletin board in the last one, St. Olaf’s, she found a message.

It was partial quote from Walden Pond: ‘I went to the woods because…’

She had no idea what that meant so she called Marcus again. 

“Maybe he’s on a retreat?” Marcus knew him almost as well as Joan, so he recognized how silly that sounded as soon as he said it. “Parks, maybe?” 

“I’ll see which ones are nearby. First, I’m going to see if anyone saw him here today.” 

She talked to the priest and he pointed her to a man who was cleaning up the coffee maker and putting away the cookies. 

“Yeah, he was here. I saw him talking to that stranger, a new guy, seems all chummy with him.”

“Michael?” 

“Yeah, that’s the guy.” 

“Sherlock said he was an old acquaintance from here.” 

“No, ma’am. I’ve been here for twenty years and I ain’t never seen that guy before.”

Joan mulled over this information as she started searching nearby parks on her phone. 

Something about this Michael bothered her. Sherlock had said they met before but he hadn’t remembered him. Since when did Sherlock not remember someone, even with PCS? 

Did Sherlock say his last name? 

She had an idea. She called Marcus. “Can you ping his phone? Or check and see who has called him?” 

“I can ping it but I need the phone and password to check his history.” 

 

 

 

“Let’s see where he is. I’m coming to the station, Marcus. Something doesn’t add up.”

When she got there, Marcus had the phone’s location. “It says he’s at home.” 

“He probably left it. You know how he can be.” 

“Do you know his password?” 

“I think so. Oh, we can check the phone calls on that one, can’t we? Let’s go get it.”

They hurried to the brownstone and finally found the phone in a box of cereal. She put in the password and checked the history. There was an unidentified caller identified from an area code north of the city. Joan pulled up a map and found a park near there.

“I’ll check this out and call you,” she told Marcus. 

It was a forty minute drive up to the park and the park itself was large and quite rustic. She supposed this is where the outdoorsy types came to camp and ‘get back to nature’ without having to venture too far out of the city. Or hopefully out of cell range. 

Now what exactly was she looking for? 

Her shoes were not meant for walking in the wood, but she did the best she could. She decided to call the unnamed number and see what happened. It rang but no one answered and no voicemail picked up either. 

She realized that she heard a phone ring somewhere close by. She called it again. It was the same phone. She followed the sound through the woods and out into a small clearing. The phone lay there on the ground. It was ringing. She started to pick it up with her bare hands then decided to use her gloves – she always had gloves since she and Sherlock were forever finding evidence that the police had left behind. She picked it up and dropped it in a ziplock that she carried for the same reason and looked around. 

She saw what appeared to be disturbed ground. She went closer. It was a rectangle where the grass and been dug up and then reseated. Her heart began to pound. She should have waited for Marcus to come with her. 

She pulled out her phone. She had a signal! Thank goodness! 

“Marcus, I’ve found something. I think you’d better get here quickly. Very quickly. Call an ambulance or – well, maybe the coroner. And bring a shovel.” 

She paced back and forth until Marcus arrived with several black and whites and an ambulance. She showed Marcus the rectangle and several young policemen, as well as Marcus began to dig. First they moved the sod that had been dug up then they began to dig shovels full of newly disturbed dirt. 

“Stop,” one of the diggers shouted. “We have a hand.” 

Joan crowded close beside Marcus. It was a small hand, a woman’s hand. She breathed a visible sigh of relief. She was surprised that her knees didn’t work properly. Captain Gregson caught her just as he walked up. 

“Joan! Are you all right?”

She further surprised and embarrassed herself by crying. “I- I will be.” She ran away from all the policemen to compose herself. She couldn’t even express how glad she was it wasn’t Sherlock. But It _was_ someone. 

The someone was a young blond woman. They put her in the ambulance to take her away. Marcus and the others fanned out to search for evidence. Joan remembered the phone and removed it from her bag, still in its ziplock, and handed it to the Captain. “I found this laying on the ground. It’s the phone that Sherlock called when he called this Michael, his new AA friend. I think he left it here for us to find.” 

“Does that mean he’s gone after a killer? Or been taken hostage by one?” Gregson asked. 

“Your guess is as good as mine,” she answered. 

“Have you met this Michael?” Gregson asked.

“No, and that’s a bit odd, too. I asked him about Michael and he was a bit sketchy on the details. I’m not sure he has any of them himself.” 

“Last name?” Gregson asked.

Joan shook her head. “Maybe some prints on the phone?” 

“We’ll get on it. Meanwhile, go home, Joan. You’re still shaking.” 

One of the young officers drove Joan home in her own car and called for someone to pick him up when they got to the brownstone. Instead of resting, she began looking around. She found a folder with a missing persons report on someone named Polly Kenner. There was a photo and the photo looked an awful lot like the dead girl they’d just found. 

She called Marcus and gave him the name. 

Marcus called back in about an hour. “The girl was Polly Kenner. We found social media and the photos, well, they’re her, pending confirmation, of course.”

“How about prints on the phone?” 

“Running them now. I’ll let you know.” 

Joan made herself something to eat then poured it out. She was too worried about Sherlock to eat. She cleaned things, the floors, the dishes, her room, Sherlock’s room. She was about to shut the door when she looked back at the table beside his bed. 

There was a printout of a street in Queens. It had a red dot over a street. 12th Street. Joan jumped on her computer and looked it up. It was an apartment building. She googled the address to see if any names came up. 

No Michaels. 

The phone rang. Gregson.

“Joan, Marcus is on his way to get you. We’ve found him.” 

“In Queens?” 

“How did you know?”

“He left a clue.”

They arrived at the building. The resident’s names were above the buzzer. Joan picked one, an obvious one. M. Latner – 201. She hit the call button. “Police. Buzz us in.” 

The door unlocked. Gregson and Marcus made Joan stay back as they mounted the steps to the 2nd floor. The door to 201 was standing wide open. Inside they saw Sherlock sitting beside a body, an obvious gunshot wound. The gun lay beside him and he was holding onto his arm but blood was seeping through his fingers. 

“I thought you’d never get here,” he said and passed out cold. 

*

Sherlock was rushed into surgery and given several pints of blood to replace what he’d lost and by the next afternoon, he was talking. 

“I didn’t remember anyone named Michael from any meetings. And I didn’t remember his face. I was willing, for a few days, to assume that it was the PCS affecting my memory. But he was chummy and I’m not the chummy sort. You know that about me, Watson.”

Joan had so far suppressed the urge to slap him for scaring her so badly, but only because he was wounded. 

“I followed up on this Polly person and found that she _was_ a regular at St. Olaf’s but Michael wasn’t. I actually remembered her face from meetings there. You know I go to various meetings so they know my face at many places. I asked about Michael at some of the other places and no one remembered him.

“To make a long story short, I followed him to Polly’s grave. The ‘work’ that he was so fond of was to rid the world of people like Polly and me. His mother had been an addict and she left him and his brother alone when they were small. Michael was big enough to find food, but the brother was a baby and died before they were found by Social Services. He was on a mission to rid the world of addicts. I was his next victim. 

“He called me and we were to meet up. He took me to the grave, where I managed to steal his phone and leave it behind when he took me to his apartment in Queens. I had already found it by having his phone pinged – sorry, Marcus, Gregson, but I know a guy – for the location. I left it on the map by my bed.

“He shot me and I shot him back. End of story.”

“I’d like to kill you myself,” Joan finally said, “and I might if Marcus and Captain Gregson weren’t here to arrest me.” 

No one bothered to ask Sherlock why Michael had chosen one of the best detectives in the city, maybe the world, to be his next victim. If they’d met Michael, they’d have known he was too intelligent for that to be coincidence. 

But Sherlock had thought about it. He just hadn’t found the answer yet.


End file.
